Salim Bachi - Paris Noir

“You’re not confusing it with Paris-Turf?”

“What would I want with horse racing?”

“If you don’t know, it’s not for me to say...”

“You’re not very helpful.”

“I don’t have to be. Don’t get on your high horse, now.”

“Do you sell newspapers or don’t you?”

“For thirty years, monsieur, and I’ve never heard of Paris Soir . Wouldn’t it be France Soir ? Or Le Parisien? ”

“Of course, the name may have changed with the Liberation. It wasn’t very respectable anymore.”

“The liberation...?”

“Of Paris. For someone who sells information, you seem ill informed. Goodbye, monsieur.”

One thing’s for sure, he’s not the one I have to kill. He doesn’t open his papers, he couldn’t have lent me books. Paper sellers should never change. Nor avenues. Avenue de Clichy has its usual look. Dusty from all the humanity beating the pavement, the same worn-out hope in their pockets. And the bargain display windows, the cheap items, the fake-jewelry stores, the greasy spoons... Nothing’s missing. Yet I have trouble recognizing it.

“Ni tout à fait la même ni tout à fait une autre.” (“Neither completely the same nor completely other.”) Verlaine again. Did he go to Cité des Fleurs? The poets all go there, I suppose. As for me, rarely. Why don’t they ever want me to go out alone? Getting lost in the streets is dizzying. They don’t like me to get lost. It’s stupid. They end up finding you. They always do. The worst thing is getting lost inside. They call that wandering. But they often say all sorts of nonsense. That we are in 2007, for instance. Who told me that crap? The one I have to kill? He’ll get what he deserves. All I have to do is take the right street. Through Cité des Fleurs, since time has stopped there. A long and peaceful path, wisteria on the walls, small gardens and bourgeois houses. Nothing disrupts its peace. Neither the flow of cars on the avenue nor life swarming at the intersections. Nor the overflowing sidewalks. Right near there people walk, eat, slave away, and die too. But no echo of that ever penetrates here. Can one die in Cité des Fleurs?

A cat stretches out in the sun. Was it stretching out when the soldiers came? The pavement echoed with the noise of their boots. The gray-green trucks were barring the path. The door of the house broken open, the screams. Inside, they’re caught in a trap. There were only three of them. Two and her. Did they try to escape? Did they resist or did they tell each other goodbye? Now the soldiers turn their guns on them. Everything is sacked, books trampled on, furniture overturned. Paintings thrown to the ground. And the shouts, like barking. Why do soldiers always bark? They immediately found the printing press hidden in the cellar. They were well-informed. To show them they were nothing anymore, the soldiers hit them.

The three of them, one after the other. What happened when they led them away? They shot her in the courtyard. A burst of gunfire. Clacking. She fell into the fuchsias. She was twenty-five years old.

No one ever saw the other two again.

Who remembers?

My God...

“Mademoiselle!”

“...”

“Mademoiselle... please...”

“Are you ill, monsieur?”

“I would like to go home.”

“Are you lost? Do you live far from here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Monsieur Robert, do you still want to kill me?” “Don’t wear me out with your questions. Tell me, instead, whether you’ve lent me any books...”

“Ah! You remember...”

“Where are they?”

“On the cupboard. Have you read them?”

“ The Old Man from Batignolles ... I suppose you had me in mind...”

“Where do you get that from? It’s because of the location. The story takes place near your home. Do you know that Émile Gaboriau’s novel may have started the detective thriller genre?”

“Nothing to be proud of. And that one, The Man Who Got Away. Albert Londres...”

“A fabulous journalist.”

“A lot of good that did him! He got away from the 17th arrondissement? It’s not hard, all you need to do is cross the avenue... Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“You’re hinting at something again...”

“Who knows?”

“My getaway from the Kommandantur this time...”

“You got away from the Kommandantur? You never told me about that...”

“You didn’t need me to find out about that.”

“I swear I didn’t know anything.”

“Really? Then why this book?”

“The escapee here is a prisoner that Londres met during one of his reporting stints at the penal colony in Guyana. Eugène Dieudonné.”

“Don’t know him!”

“A typesetter accused of belonging to the Bonnot gang. Those anarchists they nicknamed the Tragic Bandits back during the Gay Nineties. An innocent man, condemned to a life of forced labor. His workshop was right next door, rue Nollet.”

“And this book... The Suspect ... you’re going to claim he has no connection with me...”

“None. Why would he? I brought it to you because Georges Simenon lived here when he came to Paris. At the Hotel Bertha. It’s still there, you surely know it...”

“What bull! Why did you lend me these books?”

“But... To refresh your memory: so you could remember the places here, the neighborhood, its history...”

“To refresh my memory.”

“Monsieur Robert, can you put down that revolver?”

“Pistol, for God’s sake! Pistol! Luger Parabellum P-08. You’re a speech therapist; instead of making me do your stupid exercises, do them yourself. You need them.”

“Monsieur Robert, please, your pistol...”

“Speech therapist... Are you the speech therapist?”

“Of course... I come every week... Lower that weapon.”

“The man I have to kill... it’s not you... You haven’t talked, have you?”

“Talked?”

“You’re too young. How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“I was that age when they arrested me. The identity cards at Riton’s... It would have only taken an hour. I got out of their clutches two days later... A miracle. It seemed suspect to our network. But should I have croaked down there because some torturers got distracted for a moment? Because a laundress left a door open that should have been closed? Because fate did me a favor? I was cleared, right?”

“Calm down...”

“My God...”

“Monsieur Robert!”

“I remember everything... They didn’t need to touch me. The bathtub... I fainted before they threw me in... When I came to, I talked... I told them everything I knew... And I would have told even more if I could have.”

“...”

“Twenty-six. I was twenty-six years old. Have you already smelled the scent of death at the bottom of a filthy cellar?”

“No... I... No one—”

“They let me go... I was supposed to give them more information... A few days later the Americans landed...”

“The war’s over, Monsieur Robert.”

“Not yet... Leave me alone. I’m tired.”

“Can you give me your revolver?”

“Pistol... Think of the exercises, young man, memory is a strange machine.”

“Monsieur Robert... what are you doing?”

“Now I know who I have to kill. He’s a twenty-six-year-old boy... No, not you; you can relax now. The one I’m talking about never leaves me. He hasn’t left in more than sixty years. Time has no grip on him.”

“Please...”

“Do you see him? He’s in front of you. Every morning I’ve seen him in my mirror. He’s haunted me every night, leaving me sleepless. He eventually dozed off, but you’ve awakened him with your books and your good intentions.”